Do some micro-financing

I was talking about being your own banking on a post sometime back. I decided to do a little micro-financing on www.kiva.org and made some small loans out. One of them will take 12 months to repay, the other 4 months. The minimum sum to loan out each time is USD25.

I really think the whole concept of micro-financing is really cool. And in some ways, it could be a better way of helping the poor compared to just dumping supplies to them (most of which get lost along the way if I'm not wrong). By helping these people do their own businesses instead, that's pretty much helping them to learn how to fish rather than giving them a fish.

You can check out my profile here, and do extend a helping hand if you think this is a meaningful way to do it.

Cheers to a great upcoming 2008!

Be your own banker!

Or something like that... actually, I'm referring to microfinancing and I came across this website that allows the general population, i.e. people like you and me, to make micro loans to people in need.

I hardly think that this is a means to obtain profits nor is it an investment. In fact, I don't even know if these people pay interest on the loans! But I seems like its for a good cause, and anyone who wants to do some good this christmas can consider helping some poor people start or improve their own business.

Volunteering

I had been thinking for awhile about volunteering, well, actually more than a year. I had many reasons for not wanting to do so. I had my weekends fully tied up with rockclimbing, church and guitar lessons then.

Well, things have changed somewhat over the year. I’m more focused on other aspects of how I can improve myself, like working on my time management, reading up on more management related books, project management etc. Time spent on rock climbing and church had been on a decline, but time spent blading has increase somewhat; and guitar lessons has ceased altogether.

So that leaves me with quite some time to read the tons of books I bought but never had time to read, and also some time to think about how I want to spend my time.

I had coached kids (P3-6) once, and think it’s a brilliant experience. Kids are lovable, creative and sometimes just plain pain in the neck, haha. I think the coaching programme is rather good, but in 5 days, it is also difficult to say if much impact has been made. This revived somewhat my interest in volunteering which I buried a year back.

I did another search and found Promiseworks providing opportunities for both Adventure Learning as well as Mentoring. Both activities interest me somewhat, but I was worried about being able to commit. Well, rather than being paralysed by analysis, I decided to give it a shot. I went down to the introductory talk with Daniel-san to check out what it is like and to ask some questions. Overall, it seems like a pretty good organisation with a good vision and mission.

Later, I found out that one of my army friends had been mentoring with promiseworks for about 2 years now! So I asked him more about what the organisation is like, and decided after weighing the pros and cons that it is worth joining.

Yup, so I guess for the new year, I’ll be engaging in voluntary activities. I wonder how it will turn out….